


If You Keep Me Alive

by agni_kai



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Sleipnir O'Hara/Theo DuMedd, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, F/M, Implied Zeetha/Higgs, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, confused children destined for polyamory, lars' contribution is basically to die just fyi, oh yeah i remember it was their shitty and vaguely/explicitly abusive childhoods, that would do it, that's not a spoiler if it's canon, why do they all have so many self esteem issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8660362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agni_kai/pseuds/agni_kai
Summary: Most people are born with a timer, counting down until the day they meet their soulmate - but Gil’s never heard of anyone else with a timer on both wrists, and Tarvek knows that a Sturmvoraus should never have soulmates even though he has two, and Agatha's inability to do anything properly is only compounded by having no timers at all. Somehow, someday, it might just all work out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from Tumblr here as part of Polyship Week (which was actually months ago now) for polyshipprompts.
> 
> Prompt: Imagine persons A and B of your OT3 are soulmates and meet when they are young. Shortly after meeting, one (or both) of them are surprised when whatever it was that signified them meeting their soulmate starts up again/happens again.

Gil knows about soulmates - of course he does. He’s grown up on a ship filled with impressionable children, all comparing timers that count steadily down day by day and giggling to each other about who they’re going to marry when they’re old enough, all steadfastly ignoring the fact that as members of the Fifty Families, they probably won’t get to choose. He can’t see anyone else’s timer, though, and no-one can see his. That’s the way it goes. It makes it hard to tell if yours is defective or wrong in some way, Gil reflects, but his must be. He lies about the days left, if anyone asks, and keeps a careful note of how long it should be according to his fake timer. After all, everyone knows that the Baron dissects anyone he finds interesting, and Gil’s never heard anyone else with a timer on _both_ wrists.

_Sturmvorauses don’t need soulmates._ That’s what his father always says, and Tarvek always agrees. Who would ever be soulmates with someone in a family like his? No-one talks about timers and numbers of days left, except in hushed whispers in the school where the children are trained to kill. When Violetta asks him what his says, as he’s smearing cream onto her latest ugly bruise, he presses harder than necessary on her tender skin and snaps that soulmates are stupid anyway and people don’t need them. Tarvek ignores the way Violetta flinches away from him and clutches her wrist and its invisible timer protectively, and tries not to think about why, if Sturmvorauses don’t need soulmates, does he apparently have two?

When Agatha asks Uncle Barry what the numbers on her wrists mean, because the priestesses had never told her, he corrects her Romanian and says she means _number_ on _wrist_. No, Agatha insists, numbers on both wrists. Can’t he see? Uncle Barry looks confused and tells her that no, he can’t, because those numbers are private. Lots of people have them, but no-one can see them, and Agatha shouldn’t talk about them to anyone. They’re not important enough to tell people about, and he’ll tell her more about them when she’s older, when she’ll understand more. She doesn’t look at them as much after that, especially after she starts getting headaches, and when she remembers to look at them they’re not there anymore. By the time Agatha finds out what the numbers mean, she’s forgotten they were there at all.

* * *

 Gil tries not to look at his timers anymore. It’s just another reminder of how he’s stupid, alone, unwanted. He doesn’t even have a family, which is about as bad as it gets when you’re surrounded by important Sparks and Fifty Families heirs. It gets worse after Theo DuMedd and Sleipnir O'Hara’s timers both run out on the same day and suddenly everyone’s talking about soulmates and true love - even though Sleipnir’s already got an arranged marriage that she can’t get out of - and Gil just wants everyone to shut up because he doesn’t want a soulmate or even two, he just wants to know who he is. He doesn’t look at his timers for months, and when he realises that one has run out, he can’t bring himself to care as much as he feels he should. Especially since when he makes an effort to listen in on people’s conversations in the school, he can’t find anyone whose timer has run out at the same time. It must just be faulty. He’s been friends with Tarvek for _months_ before he makes the connection with so many of the offhand comments the other boy had made made about people’s timers running out, and realises that he must have lied about his own timer as well. Besides, by that time he doesn’t care because he’s the Baron’s son now even if no-one else knows, and he doesn’t want a soulmate that spies on his father. Having a family, being _wanted_ , is more important than having a stupid soulmate who kept it a secret for months, and after all - he’s still got one timer left.

Tarvek’s first timer runs out the day he goes to Castle Wulfenbach. He’s made a habit of not looking at them, so when someone asks him on his first day there how long he’s got left - like people always do - it comes as a shock. He gives the red-haired girl the other number, the one measured in years and not the glaring zero on his wrist, and tries to think about who he’s met today while half-listening to her tale of how she met her own soulmate in the school a couple of months ago. When he asks if anyone else’s timer has run down recently, she says no, and Tarvek asks around for a little while before realising that he shouldn’t care. Besides, his timers probably aren’t reliable anyway - for one thing, there’s two of them - and who would want to be the soulmate of a Sturmvoraus anyway? He never makes the connection between his timer and the boy who so bitterly denounces him as a spy after months of friendship, and he has more things to worry about than a faulty system for finding true love. His father’s going to be _furious_.

Agatha’s always known she was broken, for as long as she can remember. First her parents, then her uncle leaves her, and everything just keeps getting worse. There’s the stabbing headaches that come whenever she tries to think properly about anything, and the way the cold perfect gears she sees in her head can never translate into a real invention when everyone else’s does, and to make everything even worse she doesn’t even have a timer. Lilith hugs her and comforts her, telling her that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t have one because she can still live a perfectly good life without a soulmate, that not having a soulmate doesn’t mean she can’t find someone to love when she’s older. Agatha sniffs and nods and pretends to have been comforted by the thought, even though she knows it’s just one more lie to make her feel better about being broken. She tries to forget about how she saw Lilith crying once after talking to her about headaches and timers, and never makes the link between that and the look on her face whenever she tells Agatha to never take off her locket.

* * *

 Gil’s feelings on soulmates haven’t changed once he’s older and publicly acknowledged by the Baron. They’ve only been reinforced by seeing Tarvek in Paris, his hard looks and harsh words - sometimes related to Gil’s father, although he’s not sure exactly who Tarvek thinks his father _is_. So he laughs and shrugs off the comments like he doesn’t care about them, coming from someone who might be his soulmate, and spends his time with the girls of Paris who don’t care about soulmates either. All the while, the timer is counting down through the years then months then days left. On the day he visits Beetleburg, he’s too angry with his father and his _tests_ to bother thinking about timers, and it’s only when he gets back to Castle Wulfenbach that night with two new hostages that he sees it has run down to zero. He hopes it was the girl in Beetle’s lab, the hostage - especially since he suspects she has the Spark - but she just avoids his gaze when asked how long she has left and tells him three months. After that, Gil pretty much gives up on the whole soulmate thing.

Tarvek doesn’t care about soulmates anymore, if he ever did at all. His father’s obsession is growing day by day, tracking down Spark girls from all across Europa and tempting them to Sturmhalten, to strap them into his machine and sacrifice them to the memory of Lucrezia. It’s a relief to go to Paris, even if Hölzfaller is there to ruin everything, just to get away from the part he has to play in Aaronev’s charade. He’s called back after Anevka’s almost-death, and he suspects he should be glad that he’s had the chance to save her, but her clank body is just a reminder of everything his father has done and everything that Tarvek has helped him with. Anevka’s admission after her revival, that she always suspected she would die young because she doesn’t have a timer, just makes Tarvek hate his two more. He would happily get rid of them both, just to sort out this whole damn problem with the Sturmvoraus factions and the Knights of Jove and their worship of Lucrezia. He bides his time, plotting, gathering all the information he needs in Paris and elsewhere, and waits for the right time to declare himself as Storm King. He keeps his remaining timer covered almost all the time now. It’s just a distraction, and getting distracted whilst playing this game means you end up dead. Besides, the only people he meets anymore are Aaronev’s co-conspirators or the Spark girls they kill, and he’d rather not know if any of them were his soulmates. Too many distractions. He needs to stay alive.

Agatha tries not to reflect too much on her lost locket, which is made easier by the encroaching arrival of the Baron. It’s only when she rolls her sleeves up to start clearing the workshop that she notices the change. She’s worn nothing but long sleeves for years now, even in summer, anything to avoid seeing the inescapable evidence of her failure to do anything properly. So the numbers on her wrists come as a complete surprise, not least because there’s two of them - one numbering in months, the other clearly stating zero. Maybe her first timer was faulty, and that’s why she now has two when she used to have none? Maybe her soulmate is dead, and the second timer is for another one, a substitute? Is that what happens, when soulmates die without ever having met? She’s almost forgotten about them, though, after the reveal of the hive engine and Beetle’s death, and Adam and Lilith have already left to search for her locket by the time she thinks to tell them. When the Baron’s son asks her the next day, she tries not to think about the zero and tells him about the other one which says three months. Maybe now, at last, there’s evidence that she’ll end up happy enough, whether it’s on the Castle or off it.

* * *

 Gil knows, rationally, that Agatha wasn’t his soulmate. She had a few months left on her timer when they met, and besides, the first time he met a soulmate it hadn’t worked out so well. But there was a connection there, when they danced to the music of his clank orchestra, and in his flying machine as she tore it apart while they were still falling, and when they were fighting wasps. And afterwards, when she kissed him- But he shouldn’t dwell on it. Proposing to her, or rather announcing their impending marriage, had been a stupid idea. Even if he’s missed out on his chance to meet his soulmate, that doesn’t leave him free to marry whoever he wants. He’s the son of Baron Wulfenbach. He has responsibilities. That’s what he tells himself, as he stands over the charred skeleton wearing her clothes and closes his fist around the gas connector that had been a makeshift ring, that she hadn’t thrown away even when running from his father. She’s not his soulmate. She doesn’t matter. But none of that explains why, when he sees the dark-haired girl that isn’t Agatha in the revivication chamber, he could swear he feels his heart stop.

Tarvek’s been worried about Anevka for a while now. She’s always been manipulative - he’s always known that she’d lied about their mother - but she’s changing, becoming even more callous than she’d ever been before. She still has Anevka’s memories, her speech patterns, but she’s lost the habits and tics that she had when she was alive or first inhabiting the clank. It might not seem much - after all, she is a clank now - but it’s not as though he has much else to worry about. His father’s plotting is going nowhere, becoming almost boring. He’s more or less given up on the whole soulmate idea, although every so often he checks his timer just for something to do. It’s still relentlessly counting down. Once he sees the Heterodyne Show, though, and realises that the girl who played Lucrezia would undoubtedly be _visiting_ \- if only for a short while - he gets a terrible feeling that this time, it might not be. Partway through the second act, while Aaronev is enraptured by ‘Lucrezia’, he surreptitiously checks his timer. Of course. Of _course_ his second chance at a soulmate would be a girl destined to become a mindless husk or, worse, the second coming of his father’s Lady. It only gets worse once she gets to the Palace. Madame Olga is pretty, and personable, and almost certainly a Spark, and Tarvek enjoys flirting with her a little too much - although not so much that he forgets the ever-present Smoke Knights, waiting for him to show any sign of slipping. Once the truth serum has taken hold at the meal, he’s given up hope of her being anything more than a vessel for Lucrezia to re-enter the world. He’s almost grateful when Anevka kills their father. And he tries to keep her safe, he really does - sabotages Anevka’s voicebox to force her to keep her alive, sends Tinka to rescue her - but in the end, it doesn’t matter. So he flatters Lucrezia, tries to help Agatha whenever she manages to break past her mother’s control, but all for nothing. And as he feels the bullet enter his body he realises that he should probably have listened to his father after all. _Sturmvorauses don’t need soulmates. It never ends well._

Travelling with the circus, Agatha thinks, is a fantastic opportunity to meet her soulmate. It’s a little disappointing that it isn’t Lars, though - he’s sweet, and kind, and funny, and she thinks she wouldn’t mind spending her life with him. Then again, that’s what she’d thought about Gil - and still thinks, sometimes, in the darkness and silence of her caravan, until she remembers his face, his voice when he heard she was dead, and remembers that she can never be with him. She confesses to Zeetha, in one of their less violent training sessions, about her missing timer and her fears that she’ll never find a soulmate. Zeetha just laughs and explains about how no-one in Skifander has timers and soulmates, and they all seem to be doing just fine. When Agatha asks about Zeetha’s own timer - she knows she has one - she talks about how her mother had one too, and ended up falling in love with a foreigner, and how Zeetha herself will probably end up with a foreigner too, but that’s no reasons to not have fun in the meantime. Besides, she tells Agatha with a conspiratorial grin, there’s nothing to say that you can only end up with your soulmate. If it doesn’t work out in a couple of months, why not give Lars a try? Then they arrive at Sturmhalten. Agatha realises early on that her soulmate is probably Prince Tarvek, which doesn’t seem so bad until she wakes up strapped to a table while he gives her voice to his clank sister. After that, she vows, she’ll ignore the whole soulmate thing. She should have known it wouldn’t work out for her. Even after he sends Tinka to get her out of the cell she is determined to not give into him, to give Lars or somebody like him a chance instead, which is just as well considering everything that happens next. And after her locket is back around her neck, as she’s kneeling over Lars’ body, she sees that her timers have disappeared again. She can’t bring herself to care.


End file.
